Grant Gross
Senior Writer

EDS settles SEC accounting inquiry

news
Sep 25, 20072 mins

Texas-based IT service provider coughs up hefty penalty for financial irregularities but neither admits nor denies wrongdoing

Electronic Data Systems (EDS) has agreed to pay $490,902 to settle a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into accounting irregularities, the agency said Tuesday.

The SEC accused EDS of failing to disclose the cost of a $225 million investment banking stock deal, maintaining inaccurate financial records, and failing to disclose an “extraordinary” transaction that made up more than 25 percent of the company’s cash flow in the first half of 2002.

EDS, an IT service provider based in Plano, Texas, did not admit or deny wrongdoing as part of the settlement. “We’re happy to put this historical matter behind us,” said Robert Brand, the company’s director of corporate public relations.

EDS replaced its chief financial officer and former chairman and CEO Dick Brown in early 2003, after the SEC opened a formal investigation into EDS accounting practices in October 2002.

Separately, the SEC said a former official of an EDS subsidiary, accused of bribing officials in India, has also agreed to settle with the agency.

The SEC had accused Chandramowli Srinivasan, the former president of EDS subsidiary A.T. Kearney India, of directing a bribery scheme in which the company paid $720,000 to senior employees of Indian state-owned enterprises between early 2001 and September 2003. The purpose of the bribes was to retain A.T. Kearney India’s business with the government entities, the SEC said.

Srinivasan agreed to pay $70,000 to settle the SEC charges. He also did not admit or deny the SEC charges.

Srinivasan’s payment was part of the SEC investigation into the accounting practices at EDS, the SEC said.

Grant Gross

Grant Gross, a senior writer at CIO, is a long-time IT journalist who has focused on AI, enterprise technology, and tech policy. He previously served as Washington, D.C., correspondent and later senior editor at IDG News Service. Earlier in his career, he was managing editor at Linux.com and news editor at tech careers site Techies.com. As a tech policy expert, he has appeared on C-SPAN and the giant NTN24 Spanish-language cable news network. In the distant past, he worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Minnesota and the Dakotas. A finalist for Best Range of Work by a Single Author for both the Eddie Awards and the Neal Awards, Grant was recently recognized with an ASBPE Regional Silver award for his article “Agentic AI: Decisive, operational AI arrives in business.”

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